Tag Archives: Chicago parking meter lease deal

A contingent of the historical old sailing ships will be here through Sunday at Navy Pier.

While sailing is not one of the topics usually covered at The Expired Meter, we felt the print advertising for event to be quite humorous and timely.

The ad was created by local ad agency Two By Four Chicago, which takes the now iconic Chicago parking meter and uses the frustration and headaches they’ve caused local drivers to create a pretty hilarious image of a sea captain from the 1700′s paying for street parking.

53rd is one of Hyde Park’s main drags and suffers much of the same traffic and parking congestion issues as it’s Northside counterparts like Clark St., Lincoln Ave., Halsted St. and Milwaukee Ave.

While several Northside aldermen are fighting to regain paid metered parking on Sundays in their ward, Alderman Will Burns (4th) who’s ward includes Hyde Park, is taking a wait and see attitude on free Sundays according to the Hyde Park Herald.

The same goes for some of the local business owners, including the owner of the well known Valois Restaurant, who seem to be on the fence whether to get rid of free parking on Sunday on 53rd St.

For the first time in more than four years, Chicago drivers will be able to park for free at most city parking meters on Sundays beginning this weekend.

Before 2009, except for a few small areas of the city, Chicago drivers never had to feed a parking meter on Sundays. But that perk vanished with all other parking meter holidays when the city, under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, leased the city’s metered parking spaces for 75 years and $1.16 billion dollars in December of 2008.

But free Sundays are officially back at neighborhood parking meters starting this weekend under a revised agreement with Chicago Parking Meters, LLC — the company which now controls the city’s parking meter system.

Bringing back free Sundays was a major part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pitch to Chicago drivers and aldermen to sell them on the revised parking meter deal his team renegotiated with CPM over the past several months.

“As one resident told me, ‘you shouldn’t have to pay to go to church’,” Emanuel said at a press conference announcing the proposed changes back in April. “Whether you go to church or not, everyone deserves a break from feeding parking meters in our neighborhoods on Sunday.”

But now, several aldermen are seeing resistance from a mayor’s office which seems to want to control the process of which wards are allowed to keep paid parking on Sundays, they say.

Two recent developments: an ordinance that would have preserved metered parking on some streets in Lakeview and Lincoln Park was not on Wednesday’s agenda for the full City Council, and a note aldermen received Tuesday night from Emanuel’s office seeking more information.

The changes to Chicago’s parking meter lease deal approved by the city council barely a week ago, will begin being implemented in select areas of the city starting this weekend–several weeks earlier than the original July 1st start date.

Teams for Chicago Parking Meters, LLC will begin the job this Sunday of switching over the over 4,400 parking meter pay boxes to allow free parking on Sundays. According to Mayor Emanuel’s office, neighborhoods in Southside wards (3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, and 25) will be the first to be able to park for free on Sundays.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel presides over Wednesday's Chicago City Council meeting. Corporation Council Steve Patton sits to his left.

Back in 2008, the Chicago City Council voted 45-5 to approve the much loathed parking meter lease deal.

At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, 11 aldermen voted against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s remix of the parking meter lease remix.

Emanuel’s renegotiated meter lease which better controls non-meter revenue from changes to the meter system value or street closures and gives free Sunday parking in neighborhoods in exchange for extending meter payment hours passed with strong support 39-11.

Despite the foregone conclusion of the vote’s outcome, before the meeting began at 10 AM, some low level shenanigans were taking place according to several sources on the city council floor.

Apparently, opposition aldermen had tried to distribute copies of the Tribune editorial critical of the proposed changes to the meter lease to fellow council members. But the copies were temporarily confiscated by someone in the administration for a short time until more reasonable heads prevailed in allow the editorial’s distribution.

The Mayor’s people were also twisting arms of no votes until the last minute, threatening political retribution in the future.

Council members took about an hour to debate the merits of the changes to the remaining 71 years of the agreement effecting the city’s 36,000 metered parking spaces.

A sign protesting high parking meter prices hangs outside a home in West Lakeview back in 2009.

It should be no surprise to anyone following the progress of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s parking meter lease remix that it should pass without much effort at Wednesday’s city council meeting.

Despite the best efforts of the Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), Ald. John Arena (45th) and other members of the Chicago Progress Reform Coalition, as well as Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) to convince other council members the renegotiated deal is a bad one, the votes are just not there to derail it.

Even up until Wednesday morning’s meeting, sources say the Mayor’s minions were working to pick off any votes they could from fence sitting aldermen with the threat of political retribution.

Based on questions during four days of hearings on the revised meter deal, most aldermen were torn between the financial savings on one hand and free Sundays and extended hours on the other.